30% Sprouted Barley Sourdough

I’ve always liked the nuttiness of barley bread. It thus bothered me a bit when I couldn’t find whole barley anywhere… That’s until recently, I discovered some hull-on barley in a tiny Indian grocery store. Of course I ended up sprouting it for this week’s bake. Since the hull is inedible, it was sifted out and discarded after milling.

30% Sprouted Barley Sourdough

	Dough flour		Final Dough		Levain		Total Dough
	g	%	g	%	g	%	g	%
**Flour (All Freshly Milled Except)***	*285*	*100*	*256*	*100*	29	*100*	*288.5*	*100*
Sprouted Barley Flour (from 90g hull-on barley)	75	26.32					75	26.00
Whole Kamut Flour	90	31.58					90	31.20
Whole Spelt Flour	90	31.58					90	31.20
Whole Pearl Millet Flour*	30	10.53					30	10.40
White Whole Wheat Flour (Starter)							3.5	1.21
Whole Rye Flour (Starter)							3.5	1.21

*Hydration*					*32.5*	*100*	*239.5*	*83.02*
Water			113	44.14	29	100	145.5	50.43
Whey			100	39.06			100	34.66

Salt	5	1.75	5	1.95			5	1.73
Vital Wheat Gluten	9	3.16	9	3.52			9	3.12
Starter (100% hydration)					7	24.14
Levain			65	25.39

*Total*			*548*	*214.06*	65	*224.14*	*548*	*189.95*

Barley hull sifted out

Sift out the bran from dough flour, reserve 29 g for the leaven. Soak the rest, if any, in equal amount of whey taken from dough ingredients.

Combine all leaven ingredients and let sit until ready, about 3.5 hours (29.5°C). Roughly combine all dough ingredients. Ferment for a total of 3 hours. Construct a set of stretch and fold at the 15 and 30 minute mark.

Shape the dough then put in into a banneton directly. Retard for 12 hours.

Preheat the oven at 250°C/482°F. Score and spritz the dough then bake straight from the fridge at 250°C/482°F with steam for 20 minutes then without steam for 25 minutes more or until the internal temperature reaches a minimum of 208°F. Let it cool for a minimum of 2 hours before slicing.

It was boiling hot in HK in the past week so my home almost reached 30°C. I had to let the dough ferment at room temperature for 3 hours to suit my schedule. Unsurprisingly, it was beginning to degrade at the time of shaping. Thanks god it still turned out fine (read: not liquefied…yet)!

Updated: The bread is a bit too dense for my liking, probably due to the high percentage of gluten free flour. That said, it's still much lighter and softer than 100% rye bread. Pearl barley is relatively mild so it didn't really shock me that sprouted barley has a subtle flavor as well. To be honest, I might not be able to detect its presence if I weren't the one who baked it. Its flavor might better come through when used with white flour. Moreover, this bread is quite sour thanks to the elevated temperature. This has certainly masked the delicate characteristics of barley further.

_______

Double shrimp & mushroom seaweed fried rice

Eggplant, soya chunk & mushroom coconut curry with paniyaram

Smoked salmon, seasoned soft-boiled egg & napa cabbages with homemade semola “ramen”

Spinach, mushroom & tuna lasagna with herby tomato sauce & provolone piccante

Ethiopian-inspired dinner: Doro wat & injera, mixed dal, green beans & cabbages in tomato sauce, and shrimp oil toasted rice

White bread of the week: 40% mixed grains SD (10% each red & white wheat, spelt & rye)

Elsie_iu's Blog
Log in or register to post comments

Would you provide some additional details about how you processed the barley, please? It appears that you may have milled the barley on a coarse setting, sifted out the hulls, and then milled the remainder at a finer setting. But, that's a guess on my part.

Thanks,

Paul

It was actually pretty straightforward because I basically dumped all the sprouted barley into the mill. If you think I had the patience to mill it separately or even bother to process it on several settings, then you don't know me very well :) Being lazy, I milled all the grains together on the finest setting as usual. By shaking the sieve (1st round of sieving), most of the flour (endosperm part) of the endosperm-bran-hull mixture was extracted. This yielded the 256g of flour for the final dough. After that, I took a spoon and pressed the remaining bran-hull residue through the sieve in a circular motion (2nd round of sieving). Most of the bran was small enough to pass through the pores when given pressure. The collected bran (29g) went into the levain build. On the other hand, the hull remained long in shape after milled. It thus stayed in the sieve and could be isolated and disposed of (15g).

Hope this helps to clarify things a bit! Thanks for asking, Paul.

I did not expect that they would have that much structure left after milling at the finest setting. Thanks for the additional explanation.

Paul

I just added a caption under the picture. The hulls were almost untouched!

Well, the cooking is amazing as always. I just finished breakfast and I"m still salivating from your photos :).

The first bread does look a little gummy which may be from over-fermenting and not just the mixture of low gluten flours. Spelt tends to go real quick as does sprouted flours so that could be part of the problem. If you try it again, you will have to watch your timing more closely.

The "white" bread looks perfect with a nice open crumb and I'm sure it was very tasty.

Happy Baking!

Ian

The barley bread might have been over-proofed... or not. It's a bit dense but it's by no mean gummy: the crumb is quite set. My theory is that the dough lost its structure from excessive proteolysis. The fact that it comprises quite a high proportion of low gluten flour only exacerbated the issue. Despite that, I certainly agree I should watch the dough more closely.

The white bread was a gift for my senior fellows in the lab. There was 2% salt in the dough, which is higher than my usual standard of 1.7%. Although I found it a tad salty, it'd probably suit most people's taste better. The aroma was quite nice for white bread though. Bread manufacturers call their bread "whole grain" when it only contains 5% added bran. I won't consider mine "whole" if it's not made with at least 80% "true" whole grains :) Those stale bran contribute no flavor or nutrition but poor texture...

Glad you like the food. Happy baking to you too!

so she could say she made bread from start to finish using home grown and milled grains. We got a fabulous crop that winter for sure but then quickly realized we didn't have a threshing machine and there was no way we going to thresh all that grain by hand there there were no small cheap threshing machines for sale on Amazon either. So we packed the grains away. Now we might think about finding them and seeing if we can get them to do what you got ours to do. Somehow I see the Nutrimill really pulverizing them though but Lucy doesn't give up easy being a determined German and really stupid.... a fine combination for a project like this one.

Both breads look really nice and it was a treat to see you make a white bread for a change. Maybe they are not as taste but more people seem to like them - just like more people like bread that isn't sour:-)

All the food looks grand as usual but I am drawn to the home made noodles, paddu and injera. It all looks first rate. Pretty soon Lucy will want to move in with you to get better food than she eats here!

We got to eat at my favorite Mexican restaurant in Phoenix yesterday for lunch. My wife's best friend from Kansas City is in town for the week end and we always take her there when she comes to visit - for the past 30 years. Los Dos Molinos. My wife doesn't like it because it is too hot for her so this is the only time I get to go. Yes, the food is hot but it is authentic and the best Mexican in AZ except at Mi Casa:-) Not tongue tacos though but I had them at Tacos Chiwas earlier in the week . We had tacos, enchiladas, chili rellenos with both green and red sauce plus guacamole and chips and salsa. They closed their place in NY City in 2009, their only location outside of AZ, after only being open for a couple of years. The customers complained the food was too hot. The atmosphere is fabulous since the Los Dos has been located in Tom Mix's old 1907 Hacienda since 1991. This hacienda on Central was once the hub of his huge ranch before he died in a car wreck in 1940. Tom was the most famous real cowboy movie star of his day. We, not my wife, just love the place.

Well done all the way around and happy baking so many different ways Elsie

maybe that's what made the difference? My mill has never been capable of breaking grain hull down. There's always a small amount of hulls mixed with the berries and every time they remain in long strands after passing through the mill. If they became pulverized, I might as well use them like flour :) My dad still considers sour bread rotten... Well, I have something to work on!

Prepare Lucy for the humidity before moving in. We don't want to suffocate poor Lucy!

I see why your wife finds the food at Los Dos Molinos too hot. At least 70% of the dishes are marked with a chili label! And I agree that with the right atmosphere the dinning experience gets a lot better! Too bad tomatillos aren't available in most supermarkets and can cost quite a bit even when they are. If not we can top our tacos and enchiladas with green sauce much more often than we do now. Tongue tacos are still on my to-do list as I have yet figured out what to do with a 3 lbs tongue. Neither of my parents eats tongue so I'll have to divide it into smaller portions and freeze them. They'll take up a lot of the freezer space, which is really limited around here :( Promise it's not going to take long before the craving kicks in and it's tongue taco time!

Glad you like the bread and food! Look forward to seeing your "100% homemade" bread!